Minimizing movements along a sequence of functionals and curves of maximal slope (Q292517)

The authors describe the asymptotic behavior of minimizing movements, as introduced by De Giorgi, along a sequence of functionals which \(\Gamma \)-converges and the link with curves of maximal slope. Considering a complete metric space \((X,d)\), they start with the definition of minimizing movement along a functional \(\phi _{\varepsilon }\) at scale \(\tau _{\varepsilon }\). They prove an equivalence result between minimizing movements and curves of maximal slope, when considering sequences \((\phi _{\varepsilon })_{\varepsilon }\) which converge pointwise to \(\phi \) and have some further \( \lim \inf \) property, but without imposing the \(\Gamma \)-convergence of \( (\phi _{\varepsilon })_{\varepsilon }\) to \(\phi \). \(\phi _{\varepsilon }\) and \(\phi \) are supposed to satisfy appropriate conditions. The main result of the paper proves that if \((\phi _{\varepsilon })_{\varepsilon }\) \(\Gamma \)-converges to \(\phi \) in the topology \(d\), then each minimizing movement along \( \phi _{\varepsilon _{\tau }}\) at scale \(\tau \) is, up to subsequences, a minimizing movement for \(\phi \). For the proof, the authors first prove uniform estimates using Gronwall's Lemma. Then, they use compactness arguments through Ascoli-Arzela's theorem.